The Price of a Cornet

Somebody had donated a whole box of knitting books, and the knitting books did not want to be dusted.

It was the second Saturday in February. Wind came off the sea and down Gull Street in long cold shoves, rattling the shop door, which Mrs Oddie kept open anyway. 'Fresh air is free,' she said, from inside two cardigans. 'I like to get my money's worth.'

Asha was on the stepladder with the feather duster and the box. Each book had to be wiped, checked for loose pages and given a price in pencil on the inside cover. Cosy Cardigans for All the Family. Fifty pence. Knit Your Own Lighthouse. Seventy-five pence, because the lighthouse was quite good. Dust went up her nose. She sneezed four times.

Below her, the orange tree sat in its cracked blue CORNISH CREAM pot, back in the window where the light was. She had checked it at nine o'clock, the way she checked it every week. Two new leaves. No buds. Dividend lay curled against the pot as if he were keeping it warm.

The last book was the thinnest. Seaside Woollies, 1971. The cover had a smiling man in a jumper with anchors on it, and the spine cracked like a biscuit when she opened it.

Something slid out.

It turned once in the air and landed on the toe of her trainer. A card, yellow as old teeth, soft at the corners. Someone had used it as a bookmark and then forgotten it for more than fifty years.

Asha climbed down and picked it up.

Across the top, in red letters that had faded to pink, it said: SUNNY SIDE KIOSK, THE PROMENADE, HOLLINS BAY. Underneath was a list, in neat black type, with prices down the right-hand side.

Asha read the first line. Then she read it again, slowly, the way she counted coins on her duvet.

'Mrs Oddie,' she said. 'Did ice creams really cost six pence?'

'They did,' said Mrs Oddie, taking the card and holding it at the end of the lifeguard. 'Six pence, and my mother said it was daylight robbery.'

Asha did not go back up the ladder. She stood very still with the feather duster, chewing the end of her plait, because she had walked past the kiosk on the seafront every day of the summer holidays and she was nearly sure the board said something completely different.

Nearly sure was not a number.

Jonah came by at half past eleven, between Biscuit and a Jack Russell called Pickle. His dad's cagoule was zipped right up to his nose, so only his freckles showed. Asha told him about the card.

'Only one way to check,' he said, through the zip.

The kiosk was still there, at the bottom of Gull Street where the promenade began, though it was green now and called SCOOPS. It was the only thing open. The sea was the colour of a wet pavement and the wind was trying to get inside Asha's ears. A woman in a bobble hat had the shutter half down.

'You two want an ice cream?' she said. 'Today?'

'It's for research,' said Asha.

The board had been chalked in July and never rubbed off. SINGLE CORNET £3.50. Asha had been right after all. She paid with £1.75 from her spend jar and Jonah paid the other £1.75 in twenty-pence pieces and one five, which the woman counted with her gloves on.

They sat on the sea wall and took turns. Vanilla, with a flake that Jonah broke exactly in half with great care. It was so cold it hurt Asha's teeth, and the wind blew her plait into it twice.

'This,' said Jonah, 'is the worst ice cream I've ever had.'

'It cost fifty-eight times more than it used to,' said Asha. She had done the sum on the back of her hand with her other glove off, and her fingers had gone white.

Sat 8 Feb: half a cornet (research)   £1.75

Jonah licked a drip off his thumb and looked at the grey sea.

'Was it fifty-eight times nicer in 1971?' he said.

Asha thought about it. Her teeth still ached.

'No,' she said. 'It was the same ice cream. The money changed.'

At teatime Mum was at the kitchen table in her blue tunic, eating toast standing up because she had to be back out at six. The fridge budget hung behind her under the lighthouse magnet.

'Mum,' said Asha. 'What did bread cost when you were twelve?'

Mum chewed. 'A loaf? About fifty pence, I think. Maybe less. I used to get sent to the corner shop with a pound and told to bring the change back.' She looked at Asha's hand, where the 58 was still faintly blue. 'Why?'

'Research.'

'Ring Nani,' said Mum, and kissed the top of her head, and went.

Nani picked up on the third ring and talked for nine minutes about her knee before Asha could ask. Then she laughed.

'In 1971? Ten pence. I remember, because that was the year they changed all the money and nobody knew what anything cost. Your Nana Mistry said the new coins looked like buttons.'

Asha checked the bread bin. The label on the bag said £1.45.

She found a sheet of graph paper in the back of her maths book and drew two lines along the edges with a ruler. Years went along the bottom. Pence went up the side, one square for every five pence, which meant the side of the page had to be quite tall. She taped on an extra strip.

Loaf, 1971 (Nani):        £0.10
Loaf, Mum aged 12:        £0.50
Loaf, now (bread bin):    £1.45

Three dots. She joined them carefully.

The line did not go up straight, the way she had expected. It crept along low for a long time, and then it bent, and then it climbed. It looked a bit like the roots of the orange tree, going round and round and then pushing up.

Kit leaned over her shoulder with a fish finger in his hand.

'That's a hill,' he said. 'Is that bread?'

'It's bread,' said Asha.

'Bread doesn't climb hills.' Kit bit his fish finger thoughtfully. 'Seagulls do. They walk up them when they can't be bothered to fly.'

Dad came in at seven, smelling of chain oil and cold air, with the paper rolled under his arm. He put it on the table and went to wash his hands. Asha turned it round. Halfway down the front page, under a photo of a man pushing a trolley, it said: PRICES UP 3% IN A YEAR.

She picked up her pencil.

£100 in a tin, one year: £100.00
Same shopping, one year later: £103.00
£100 at the building society (4%): £104.00

She looked at the three lines for a long time. The building society was winning, but only by a pound. A pound was not very much to be winning by.

'Dad,' she said, when he came back drying his fingers on a tea towel. 'Do prices ever go up faster than four per cent?'

Dad thought about it. 'Some years,' he said. 'Some years a lot faster. Why?'

'Research,' said Kit, with his mouth full.

Upstairs, Asha knelt by her bed and pulled out the shortbread tin. It had been empty since November. It still smelled faintly of butter. She prised the lid off with the teaspoon out of habit, though there was nothing in it to count.

Across Gull Street, the shop was dark except for the streetlamp falling into the window. The orange tree stood in its cracked blue pot. Beside it, a large ginger shape had flattened itself against the glass.

Asha held up the tin so he could see it.

'You'd have shrunk,' she told Dividend.

Dividend did not move. But two doors along from him, the Gull Street Bakery still had its lights on at nine o'clock at night, which it never did. Bernie Crowe was sitting on an upturned flour crate in his apron, staring into the open mouth of the oven, and taped to the door in thick felt pen was a sign:

OVEN POORLY. NO SCONES TILL FURTHER NOTICE.